Vieille ogresse

The old hag with the yellow teeth

U 3.230-4: M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes.

In spite of Kevin Egan's clear identification of its author the quotation has so far not been located. We find it in a footnote to a passage critical of Irish landlordism in Édouard Drumont's (1844-1917) Le testament d'un antisémite (1891):

The French journalist may have picked up the anecdote in Kazlitt Arvine's Cyclopaedia of anecdotes of literature and the fine arts of 1852:

The Sunday Mercury says that, after Frederic Le Maitre had played before Queen Victoria some scenes of a new role he is about to play at the Port St. Martin, called the Rag Picker, her majesty, who had become very much interested, said to the artiste, "How is it possible that there can be such wretched, unhappy people among you?" To which Le Maitre replied, — "Madame, they are the Irish of France."

(p. 180)

Drumont received considerable attention abroad, and the Freeman's Journal's description of him on 7 September 1889 is nothing out of the ordinary:

M. Edouard Drumont, the author of some very clever books, though somewhat ferocious in tone, upon the Jewish question...